You are listening to Abide in Jesus, the podcast for women who want to experience Christ’s healing touch in their lives. I’m your host, author and Bible teacher, Carolyn Rice, and in this episode, we are going to talk about how to choose life giving relationships after you’ve been here.
Scripture
The scripture for today is mark 3:31 -35 and all the verses in this podcast are from the world English Bible.
His mother and his brothers came and standing outside. They sent to him, calling him and multitude was sitting around him, and they told him, behold, your mother, your brothers and your sisters are outside looking for you. He answered them, who are my mother and my brother. Looking around at those who sat around him. He said, behold, my mother and my brothers for whoever may do the will of God. The same is my brother and my sister and my mother
I came from a background of abuse, and one night I was at a church meeting and this man prayed for me. And he said, “You feel really ugly.”
And he was right. I did feel ugly. I felt like the abuse was my fault. I felt like all the lies that had been said about me and the shame that had been projected upon me, I thought it was true.
I thought I was truly ugly and that I had to be awful to have had those things happen to me. I believed the lies that what those people did to me was my fault somehow.
But then the man said, “But the Lord said, I’m going to dress you up and I’m going to put your rings in your ears and a crown upon your head.”
And it took a long time for that to happen. But the Lord did a work in my heart. And he helped me to see that I was not defined by what had been done to me. I was not defined by the people who had the title of family and what they did.
So, when I see this verse, that whoever may do the will of God, the same is my brother and my sister and mother, that surely speaks to my heart about the people that God has put into my life that are like family.
The Lord put people into my life that helped me to grow, that helped me to be who I am now that mentored me, that loved me.
But it was a journey to get there. You see, having been abused, I was surrounded by people who tore me down. I was surrounded by people who told me I was less than, not good enough and that there must be something awful wrong with me.
So, I didn’t trust anyone. I was on guard, and afraid.
I hid myself in the dark, hiding myself. I kept the bad out, but I also kept the good out. Slowly but surely, God led me to healthy relationships and ministries, where He showed me that not everyone was out to hurt and wound me, and not everyone thought those awful things about me.
I learned that with some people, it was okay to be vulnerable and it was okay to let myself come out, and it was okay to ask for the help that I needed. It was okay to let people love me.
I realized that I grew up in such dysfunction that I thought dysfunction was normal. So, when it came to choosing life giving relationships, I didn’t know what to look for.
So today I want to share my journey of how the Lord worked in my life and talk about how you can choose life giving relationships after you’ve been hurt.
What a Healthy Relationship Is
So the first point is we need to know what is healthy. Sometimes we have to understand what is not healthy before we understand what healthy is.
How do we tell?
What’s healthy when we have not had healthy modeled for us?
Traits of Unhealthy People
Some traits of unhealthy people are:
- They don’t care about your feelings.
- They hurt you. And then they deny that they hurt you, or they say, it’s your fault that you caused their behavior in some way.
- They hold you responsible for things that are not your fault, like their feelings and their behaviors.
- They never own up or truly apologize for what they’ve done. They may apologize, but only if they’re backed into a corner. A true apology has empathy for what you’ve been through. But an apology that comes from being backed into a corner is only to say “Sorry, you made me do that. Sorry you feel that way.”
- They don’t own what was done or see the pain they caused you.
- Unhealthy people want you to be about their agendas.
- They cannot accept boundaries or that you don’t exist for them. They can’t accept the word no. When they hear no, they get angry and try to manipulate you into doing what they want anyway.
- They do not respect you as a separate person from them, with your own interests and choices. They want you to leave what you love in order to cater to their needs and their wants.
What Is Healthy?
And on the other hand, healthy people:
- are investing in their own relationship with God.
- They own their mistakes and they try to be better.
- They care about how they make other people feel. They’re not responsible for your feelings, but they care about how you have been made to feel.
- They are learning.
- They are growing
- They’re reflecting, they’re nurturing their own relationship with God,
- They don’t want you to bow to their agendas, but they want you to pursue the things God has put on your heart, the gifts and talents that God has put in you. They want to help you get there.
- They want you to be the best you that you can be.
- They don’t have their own agendas for your life, but they simply want to be your friend or your family member.
Know Them by Their Fruit
So again, how do we discern between healthy and unhealthy people when we’ve been steeped in unhealthy?
I had to grow in that because I was drawn to the unhealthy people because that’s who I knew. That’s what I knew.
Matthew 7:16-20, it says, by their fruits, you will know them.
Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles even so every good tree brings forth good fruit, but the corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. Neither can I corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down and thrown into the. Therefore, by their fruits, you will know them.
How do you know what people’s fruit is?
What are they birthing in their lives? What kind of results, or harvest are they getting from what they’re sowing in their lives?
Are they bearing the fruit of the spirit or the fruit of the flesh in their lives?
Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are obvious, which are adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness lustfulness idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger. Rivalries, divisions, heresy. And beans, murderers, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these, which I forewarn you. Even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Galatians 5:22-23 says, but the fruit of the spirit is love. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control against such things. There is no law.
Now. None of us is perfect. None of us is going to display these fruits of the spirit all the time, every day, because we’re all growing and we’re all not perfect.
But are the people you are around pressing toward the goal of being a doer of the Word of God and not hearer only?
Or are they sowing to their flesh? Not moving forward, staying in bitterness, staying in hatred, just sowing to their flesh and reaping the fruit of that?
How Do You Feel?
Another way to discern if people are healthy or unhealthy is how do you feel?
How do you feel after you’ve been with them?
Do you feel drained and sapped of energy, torn down and discouraged?
Or do you feel better from having been around them? Uplifted and encouraged?
Pay attention to how you feel after you are with people, it will show you whether they are unhealthy or healthy, whether that’s an unhealthy relationship for you or a healthy relationship for you.
Choose Who You Spend Time With
Now I can’t always get away from unhealthy people.
Sometimes they are even in the church.
Sometimes we have to deal with them in the workplace or in other areas of life.
But that’s why we use discernment.
We have boundaries and we don’t let them SAP our time, energy and resources.
So, even if we can’t avoid unhealthy people all together, we can choose to spend more time with healthy people and learn their ways instead of unhealthy people.
Don’t Unhealthy People Need God?
What about those unhealthy people?
- We pray for them.
- We know that God loves them and also wants to work in their lives.
Even Jesus said, In Mark 2:17, those who are healthy, have no need for a physician, but those who are sick, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Work On Your Own Healing
First, work on your own healing.
That’s what I had to do. I had to remove myself as much as I could from those unhealthy people and unhealthy patterns so that I could heal.
- I had to leave those people to Jesus.
- Ask Jesus, to send people into those people’s paths to help them get well
- but know that you are not their savior
A Story from My Devotional, Lord, Heal My Heart
I want to leave you with this story.
It’s published in my book, Lord, Heal My Heart.
Alana’s fee were on soft ground.
She took a deep, refreshing breath of damp forest air, “Such a beautiful place. Why have I never been here before?”
“You’ve never looked for it.”
She whirled around at the voice behind her.
“Welcome to my garden.” A bearded man in overalls stood near, smiling with a twinkle in his eyes.
“It’s one of my favorite places to be.”
He took a few steps toward a garden bed. “This is one of my favorite flowers. He pointed to a particular rose. It had sparkles of gold amongst the deep pink.
“It’s beautiful.”
She moved closer and bent to take in the flowers enchanting aroma. She could only describe this smell as pure beauty. She ran her finger across the petals feeling the silkiness.
“Let me show you where it came from.” The man motioned for her to follow him and went to another garden full of weeds, with a single rose, barely standing up straight.
The petals were Wilting, looking as if they were about to fall to the ground.
“That beautiful rose came from this garden?”
She looked back at the sparkly rose. She’d much rather be over there.
“There is a great beauty hidden in the most overlooked of flowers. If they were loved and nurtured, their beauty would shine through. That other flower has gold on it, but this rose is turning brown. The weeds are starving this flower.”
He ran his fingers down it’s crinkled leaves, it stood taller at his touch. He began to dig it out of the ground, his strong hands, embracing it gently. “People see this flower and say ugly things about it Even ignore it, but it doesn’t do the flower any good. But if someone would see that it only needs to be nourished, the flower would bud and bloom until it had a breathtaking beauty.”
He carried the flower to the other garden. Alana thought it looked tiny and frail in his hands. He replanted it, his shovel scraping against the soil as he dug. “So many missed the majesty of this flower, because they only look at what it is, and not at what it could be. It takes a special person to do that.”
The man stood up and wiped the dirt from his hands, kind eyes staring directly into hers.
“Do you feel ugly Sometimes Alana?”
Alana let her mouth drop open.
Without waiting for her answer, he went on. “You are one of the most precious, beautiful flowers in my garden.”
Tears came to Alana’s eyes and she brushed them away.
She looked up to tell the man, thank you.
He was gone.
Why I wrote that Devotion
I wrote this story and put it in the devotional, Lord, Heal My Heart to give a picture of this very thing.
We who have been in unhealthy, abusive, dysfunctional things have been drooping flowers.
We have been wilted.
We have been not a nurtured.
We actually have been poisoned by the things that have happened to us.
How could we grow up to be beautiful and breathtaking when we haven’t been nurtured, when our roots haven’t been able to grow, when we haven’t had good things said about us?
God Wants to Replan you, to show you what a Healthy Relationship Looks Like
But dear sister in Christ, your God wants to replant you.
And He wants to replant you in to his kingdom with healthy flowers around you.
He wants to nurture you.
He wants to build you up.
And part of that comes with your own relationship with Him.
We Heal in Community
But another part comes in community.
Let him put other flowers around you to nurture you and build you up. Let him put community around you, good community.
And that is where, especially when we have been in unhealthy relationships, we need to have that discernment and pray for that discernment of who is healthy to be around and who is not.
Prayer
I would like to pray for you today.
Father, I pray for my sister in Christ. I pray that you would replant her in with healthy people.
I pray Father, that you would nurture her, that you would fill her with yourself and help her to stand up tall and be the beautiful flower that you have called her to be.
I pray Father that you would help her to find healthy relationships that you would put people into her life that would be mentors and friends, and that would love her, and that would help to nourish her and help her to know, that she is loved, that you have chosen her, that she is beautiful and that she is the most precious daughter of the King of Kings.
Help her to shed the ugly words and things that have been done to her, and help her to flourish in your presence and in the presence of people who follow you.
Help her father to completely walk out of unhealthy patterns, to heal from the hurt and wounds, and learn to be loved by healthy community around her. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you for listening to Abide in Jesus. You can find show notes for this episode at Carolynsbooks.com. Do you know, someone who you feel would enjoy Abide in Jesus? Share the love and send them a link to this episode.
